The Bible and me

This was writtin in November 2007. But it’s a good way to start this blog.

Religion: a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny; an institution to express belief in a divine power;

The Crescendo

I sit and stare from the window of my office. My office is on the 2nd floor and the window overlooks the church grounds next door. The church is there as a constant reminder of one of the only things in my life I absolutely fail to understand – religion. Until about four months ago, I had a handle on everything. Well, not everything. But everything that mattered. I understood what was going on around me, the people, the places, work, play — everything. Now, I’m not so sure.

You see, one of my closest friends found god.

Yeah, I know. Doesn’t sound like much right? Well, it is a big deal for me. Before then, I’d spent eight years becoming close to my friend. Earning his respect, his trust his confidence and he mine. I knew what he believed in, what he stood for and how he came to be that way. Now? Well, now I don’t know. Someone has come between us now, someone who goes by the name Yahweh (and it’s a stupid name if you ask me). In three months this usurper has slotted neatly into the peghole above mine. I don’t understand what he has done in three months that I haven’t been able to do in eight years. I’ve really racked my brains about this. What can someone who doesn’t exist have that I don’t?

It’s also a shock to the system as I considered my friend to be an on-the-level kind of guy. You know the kind of chap who doesn’t take any shit. If there’s something he doesn’t understand, he’ll do his damnedest to find out as much as he can about it. As an example, he decided he wasn’t having much luck with the ladies, so he decided to go off and read about it and learn as much as he could. I can’t say it did much for his pulling ability, but it did show him that women are not infallible, which was a big boost to his confidence. I digress, but the point is the same — he didn’t understand something, so he went and read about it. He’s not an idiot.

Then along comes this cult called christianity. His girlfriend and soul-mate is a devout Christian (apart from the rule breaking when it comes to dating my friend — but she can reconcile that with Jesus, something else I don’t understand.). She is an absolutely amazing person, intelligent, witty, erudite and beautiful (amongst other amazing qualities) — I am honoured to be counted among her friends. They’ve had conversations and reasoned argument about religion and he’s taking it seriously. It’s no longer some crap you can ignore as it’s what other people are doing. When it’s your girlfriend, you have to take some interest. So, he starts looking into it, reading about evolution and creationism and blah blah blah. Really, just blah. Religion is so worthless to me that I’m struggling to write this soliloquoy without smashing my head through the screen, but I will continue as I need to get this bile out of my brain.

So. He starts doubting evolutionary threory (Darwinian theory of natural selection) as it’s a “theory” and there are too many maybes. He turns to the bible and creationism and the matter of intelligent design. OH MY GOD. Intelligent design, makes my fingers hurt just typing those fucking words. What I don’t get is why creationism/iD is all that’s left if you don’t believe in evolution.

Some guy: “Oh, I don’t think evolution is correct, so, by default, I have to believe in creationism and intelligent design.”

So, because evolution didn’t seem to work in my friends eyes, too many maybes and ifs (and, if I’m honest, there are a lot of if’s and unanswered (but not unanswerable, I’ll get to that later) questions). Automatically, god is there to provide an answer. If science can’t provide you with the definitive answer you need, who can? God? No. He can’t. If science can’t answer it, religions’ answer is “Because god said so — don’t ask questions which you won’t like the answer for (or it is completely unable to provide, save the blanket response of “god moves in mysterious ways”)”.

Through some means which I suspect is probably (and rightly) his curiosity piqued, he goes on a quest for other answers. Fueled, in part, by his partners beliefs he turns to religion first. That’s a fair way to go, if you don’t like what you see, try the polar opposite, see if that works.

That’s when it starts to get a bit hairy. You see, he began to believe in the historicity of the bible, that is, it’s historical authenticity. Claiming that some parts of the bible can be corroborated by external, archeological findings and studies — which parts of it can. However, there are parts of it which can be disproved by archelogical findings also and of course there are the miracles, which are just plain fantasy.

His argument is now along these lines:

1. Parts of the bible can be corroborated and thus proven to be correct;
2. Because of this, the bible as a whole can be seen as being more of an authoritative source of information about history in biblical times;
3. The “authors” of the bible lend weight to their story by getting some shit right;
4. This means that the things that cannot be proved become slightly more believable (things like, oh, I don’t know, miracles. Loaves and fishes? Parting of the waves? Jesus walking on water/healing the sick/rising from the dead?).

This is a fair way of looking at things, when you think about it, this kind of behaviour occurs in every day life. You are less inclined to believe the spoutings of a politician than you are of a professor.

Science is the same, there are provable facts: blood is red, oxygen keeps us alive, trees make oxygen, water is wet, space is massive (like junglist) and people can’t fly unaided. Because science gets a lot of shit right, the stuff that it supposes are lent more weight and become more believable because of the authority its masters have gained through getting a lot of stuff right and making our lives generally more comfortable.

If science gets things wrong, it says “Oh, we fucked that up — how did we do that? OK, thats how. We can see what we did wrong, we won’t make that mistake and this is likely to be the correct answer this time, but we’re always open to other suggestions.”

This is all great news for the religious amongst us. But lets go back to the historical argument about the bible. What happens when parts of the bible can be proved to be incorrect? To be shambling lies and nothing more than works of fiction? Relgion reacts badly in one of two ways. Firstly we can take the Old Testament, commonly thought to be a crock of shit (except by fundamentalists) and shouldn’t really be relied on as anything other than metaphor. Most christians will suggest you read the New Testament first as you need to take the OT with a pinch of salt or that the OT will make more sense after reading the NT (why?). Was this always the way? No, people believed that OT was just as real as the NT until it didn’t quite fit with the way society functions today. Stoning women for adultery and burning oxes because your neighbour looked at you funny* don’t really work in this day and age.

The second way it reacts is to be utterly outraged by the insinuation that such an institution could be wrong! Science/archelolgy/palentology is obviously wrong DO NOT ASK QUESTIONS, FOR THEY HAVE NO ANSWERS (or, the answers you were looking for at any rate (these are not the droids you are looking for)). It’s OK for science to prove the bible is correct, religion luuuurves science then. When science casts doubt upon religion. Uh oh, prepare ye for a smitin’ boy!

So, back to my friend. In order to understand his decision better, I’ve read nothing but non-fiction books about religion for the last three months, I’ve steered away from arguments about religion until I have a stronger knowledge of it. I’ve watched as much crap on either side of the fence on YouTube that I’m able to point my bleeding, jaded eyes at, I’ve thought about it until my brain melted from my ears and I’m still no closer to understanding.

Why? Because I don’t feel as close to him as I did and that makes me sad. The reason? He’s not the same person who I came to know over the last eight years. This finding god is so out-of-character that it frightens me. I still see him as much as I did, I still love him as much as I did, but I now know that everything he says, thinks and does is going to be rooted in a belief in some archaic work of fiction, not coherent enough to even be considered a novel, that thinks it has a right to tell people how to behave. It undermines everything I thought I knew about him and it feels like he’s been replaced by an imposter.

He might say that that that isn’t true, he’s just the same as he was and would answer questions the same as he always would. I would then say “Whats the point in relgion then?”. If it’s not there to guide you, whats it there for?

The only other question I ask myself is why aren’t I being saved? If the bible is to be believed, I’m going to burn in hell for all eternity for not believing. Why, in that case, is my friend not trying his hardest to make me see the light? Does he want me to burn in hell? Or does he not believe I’m going to be incinerated by the dark angel? That creates more questions — should you only believe in parts of the bible? Which parts? The parts that are relevant to you? The parts that least affect you? Can you tailor christianity to meet your needs? Wouldn’t you be better of researching other relgions? Hinduism, Buddhism or Paganism?

I shall continue my quest to understand, it’s an interesting journey. I’m learning a lot and enjoying every minute of it. I just hope that even if I can’t understand why he chose god, I can find a way to live with how I feel about it as I love him like a brother.

*Not really in the Old Testament, but would you have disbelieved it?